5 Tips for Creating Content That Resonates With Your Readers

As a content creator, it can happen that you find it difficult to get your message across. Sometimes you think you did a great job with a piece of content but then to your utter dismay, your readers just don’t get it.

So what’s the deal? Why are your readers not responding to your content like they should?

The explanation is simple: Sharing valuable information is good, but it may not be good enough. You may have a lot of expertise when it comes to your line of work but the task is to create your content in a way that it resonates with your audience. This particular task is much easier said than done. It is a trait very difficult to master.

But you got to do what you got to do, right? After all, you can create valuable content day in day out for as long as you live, but unless the content stimulates your reader’s fancy in some way, it’s not going to get shared, forwarded or linked to or do your business any good. Making your content more impactful is what is going to make people read what your message in its entirety and drive conversions.

So you know what you have to do to connect with your readers. The more important question now is how do you do it? How do you create content that resonates with your readers?

1. Understand Your Audience

To create content that resonates with your audience, you first need to know who your readers are. These are, after all, the people you want to convert into buying customers. Research and compile your reader personas. To do this, you can use an online template or you can independently ask the right people the right questions to the get the information you want. You could also look at this article which walks you through the process of creating reader personas.

2. Deliver Your Message in the Right Format

It’s one thing having an expertise in a certain market and another getting your point across to an audience. You know how sometimes you find yourself debating whether you want a certain book on your tablet or in paperback form so you can actually flip through the pages as you go. That’s exactly the kind of mental debate you should have when you consider the best way to market your content. You need to think: What’s the best way to get a particular message across? In what format will the message have the most impact? Content can be presented in the form of a blog post, an infographic, a video, a checklist or even a comprehensive user manual.

3. Make Your Content Paint a Picture

When you write a blog post, you want an introduction that’s going to draw in the readers. For instance, say you are writing an article about how to optimize your marketing strategy for mobile marketing. You could use either one of the two introductory lines below:

Introductory line 1: These days, most people have a smart phone, which they use to browse the web.

Introductory line 2: Everyday, when your morning alarm goes off, the first thing you do is fumble around for your cell phone and check if there is anything important on there: emails, Facebook updates, app updates.

Both are good, grammatically correct sentences and relevant to the post you are about to make but clearly, the second option paints a picture that your reader will undoubtedly resonate with more. When you draw in the attention of the reader, you can then use this to your advantage to craft a story and thereby convey your content in an impactful way.

4. Use Facts and Figures for Impact

Depending on the content you need to share, sometimes you could consider using math to convey a message with more of a bang. That’s perhaps the reason why infographics are gaining so much popularity lately. They combine words and pictures and numbers. They are easy to understand and do not consist of blocks of text to convey a message that could be just as easily passed across in a clearer and more visual way using data.

5. Ask Your Audience for their Opinion

To make your content more impactful, you need to find a way to engage your readers. When you ask your readers for their opinion or you get them involved in some alternative way, they become vested in what you have to say and become a part of the content creation process. To that end, your social media accounts can be quite helpful.